Presenter Bios

Leona Grearson Bizzozero is a native Vermonter residing in Washington, Vermont with her husband, Chuck, and children Jacob & Lilli. Lee operates a sanctuary called HespeGarden Ranch & Rescue producing Vermont Camelid Compost.  The Ranch is home to alpacas, llamas, some sheep, free ranging poultry…and yes, Mimi the Unicorn with no Horn. Lee practices and promotes symbiotic agriculture to humanely enhance animal health, happiness and overall yields.

Sally Ryder Brady, writer, teacher, and free-lance editor, is the author of the novel, Instar, Sweet Memories, and two books of non-fiction, A Yankee Christmas Featuring Nantucket & A Yankee Christmas Featuring Vermont for which she appeared on Oprah. Her short stories and essays have been published in House Beautiful, The Boston Globe, Good Housekeeping, Yankee, Woman’s Day and other publications. Sally lives in Hartland, VT.

David Budbill One of Vermont’s most cherished poets, David is the author of seven books of poems, eight plays, a novel, fiction, essays, is a performance poet on two CDs. Garrison Keillor reads frequently from David’s poems on his National Public Radio program The Writer’s Almanac. Among David Budbill’s prizes and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and the Vermont Arts Council’s Walter Cerf Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. http://www.davidbudbill.com

Michael Caduto is an author, ecologist, storyteller and musician who presents programs and performances for all ages. He is also the only environmentalist who has ever used CPR to save a chipmunk’s life. At Bookstock, Michael will introduce Catch the Wind, Harness the Sun: 22 Super-Charged Science Projects for Kids and Riparia’s River. He is well known as the creator/co-author of the best-selling Keepers of the Earth® series and Native American Gardening. His other books include Pond and Brook, Earth Tales from Around the World, The Crimson Elf, In the Beginning and A Child of God.  His books have received the Aesop Prize, NAPPA Gold and Brimstone Award (National Storytelling Network).  Michael’s articles have appeared in Cricket, Ranger Rick’s NatureScope, Green Teacher, Instructor, Rodale’s Organic Gardening, Vermont Life and Sanctuary.

Wendy Call is a writer, editor, teacher, and translator based in Seattle and Miami.  She’s currently Writer-in-Residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.

Robert L. Cavnar is a 30 plus year veteran of the oil and gas industry with deep experience in operations, start-ups, turn-arounds, and management of both public and private companies. He is Chief Executive Officer of Luca Technologies of Golden, Colorado, which harnesses natural processes to produce natural gas sustainably.

Jason J. Czarnezki is a professor of law in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. Previously, Professor Czarnezki served as a law clerk to the Honorable D. Brock Hornby of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine and as a law clerk for the Bureau of Legal Services at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Deborah Davidson is a curator, artist and part of the core faculty in the MFA program at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. She teaches Visual Books. She is involved in the curatorial project and multi-venue exhibit entitled “Tenacity of the Book.”  Deborah was the curator of exhibits for six years at the New Center for Arts and Culture in Boston.  Her work is in many private and public collections, including the artists’ book collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Yale University, the Boston Public Library, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Jon Gilbert Fox has been taking photographs professionally for over thirty years. His photographs have been published in such diverse venues as U. S. New & World Report, The New York Times, House and Garden, Playboy, Vogue, Scholastic Magazine, Vermont Life, Scientific American,  Focus, The Washington Post, and Condé Nast Traveler.

Adam Golaski is the author of Worse Than Myself. He is a founder of Flim Forum, a press publishing books of contemporary experimental poetry, and is the editor of New Genre, a literary journal for new and experimental horror and science fiction. He blogs at www.adamgolaski.blogspot.com.

Lisa Harrow’s stage career started at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) where she played  such leading roles as Olivia in Twelfth Night opposite Judi Dench, and Portia in The Merchant of  Venice,  opposite Patrick Stewart. Lisa was a core performer in the legendary TV production, Playing Shakespeare: RSC Master Classes. In the U.S., Lisa has performed major roles in Wit, The Cherry Orchard, All My Sons, Mary Stuart, Ion, and in 2010 Hamlet at the Northern Stage Theater in White River Junction, as Gertrude.

Mary Holland, naturalist, nature photographer, Valley News columnist and author, resides in Hartland, Vermont.  Mary, an environmental educator, has worked for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the Vermont Institute of Natural Science and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.  She is the author of two books:  Milkweed Visitors, a children’s book that introduces young and old alike to the insects that visit a milkweed patch, and Naturally Curious:  A Photographic Field Guide and Month-by-Month Journey Through the Woods, Fields and Marshes of New England.

Henry Homeyer, aka “The Gardening Guy,” is a freelance writer, a UNH Master Gardener, a garden designer/consultant, and the author of three other books on gardening. He writes a weekly gardening column for the Valley News and other newspapers in the Northeast, in addition to broadcasting on VPR and teaching a course in sustainable gardening at Granite State College. He lives in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire.

Sarwar Kashmeri is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council & fellow of the Foreign Policy Association. He is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as an expert on U.S.-European relations and is the author of 2 books, including the recently published NATO 2.0: Reboot or Delete (www.2nato2.com). Kashmeri is a VPR commentator and lives with his wife & their 5 sheep, a donkey, and Ridgeback, on their farm in Reading, Vermont.

Nancy Kilgore lives and writes in Vermont and is a psychotherapist in Hanover.  An ordained minister, she has served churches in several denominations. Nancy leads workshops in mindful writing and mindfulness-based therapy. See her website www.nancykilgore.com.

Cleopatra Mathis is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including What to Tip the Boatman? (2001), which won the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poems.  The NY Times Book Review wrote, “[Cleopatra Mathis’ poetry] enthralls without throwing the reader off a cliff. And all the while she brandishes the gifts of a talented poet who has hit her stride.”  She is Professor of English at Dartmouth College, where she directs the creative writing program.

Archer Mayor is Vermont’s most popular mystery writer. His Joe Gunther detective series, 19 books in all, is one of the most enduring and critically acclaimed police procedural series being written today. For years, Mayor has integrated actual police methodology with intricately detailed plot lines in novels the New York Times has called “dazzling.”

Dennis McCullough, M.D., has been an “in-the-trenches” family physician and geriatrician for 30 years. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, and serves as a faculty member in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He lives with his wife, the poet Pamela Harrison, in Norwich, VT.

Wesley McNair. Often referred to as “a poet of place,” New Hampshire native Wesley McNair captures the ordinary lives of northern New Englanders while writing about family conflict and other autobiographical subjects. He has lived for many years in Mercer, Maine, and has authored more than half a dozen collections of poetry. He has received many fellowships.  McNair has taught for several decades and is currently professor emeritus and writer in residence at the University of Maine at Farmington. http://blackwidow.umf.maine.edu/~wesmcnair

Peter Money Peter Money, poet, will introduce the poets.  Director of Harbor Mountain Press, he teaches locally at the Center For Cartoon Studies and at Lebanon College.  His books to date include These Are My Shoes, Minor Roads, A Big Yellow, Instruments, Between Ourselves, Finding It: Selected Poems, To day—Minutes only, and the hybrid poetic fiction Che. His next book, translations with Sinan Antoon of Saadi Youssef’s new poems, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.  He is married to Norwich Public Library Director Lucinda Walker, who is a panelist at Bookstock.

Sharon Olds is one of contemporary poetry’s leading voices. Winner of several prestigious awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, Olds is known for writing intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry which graphically depicts family life as well as global political events.   One reviewer for the New York Times said, “Her work has a robust sensuality, a delight in the physical that is almost Whitmanesque. She has made the minutiae of a woman’s everyday life as valid a subject for poetry as the grand abstract themes that have preoccupied other poets.” Her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning volume The Dead and the Living (1984) alone has sold more than 50,000 copies, ranking it as one of contemporary poetry’s best-selling volumes. She has been poet laureate of New York State. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/205

Thomas Powers, Keynote Speaker, is the author of The Killing of Crazy Horse, published by Alfred Knopf in November 2010.  Powers’ previous books include Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al Qaeda (2004); Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993); The Confirmation (2000), a novel, and The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Knopf, 1979).  Powers won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 and has contributed to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. He lives in Norwich, Vermont.  http://www.thekillingofcrazyhorse.com

Purple Crayon Productions is a community space where children are given the opportunity to have joyful, meaningful, and satisfying experiences through visual arts and music. Our mission is to provide the town of Woodstock and surrounding communities with a place to enjoy and participate in a wide variety of art processes. Programs offered at Purple Crayon are designed to nurture each individual’s

inherent creative capacities and raise the possibility of art as a vital force in a child’s overall growth and expressive abilities. Purple Crayon is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Jim Rosenthal has written more than 10 books in 20 years of publishing. His titles on baseball include Nolan Ryan’s Pitchers Bible, Tony Gwynn’s Total Baseball, Pitch Like a Pro,  Ichiro’s Art of Baseball, and Randy Johnson’s Power Pitching. He currently also writes about food for his website: www.naturaltraveler.com and is English Language Editor of Two Mundos Magazine.

John Stadler is the author/illustrator of thirty books for children, including three titles presented on Public Broadcasting’s “Reading Rainbow” series.  His book, The Cats of Mrs. Calamari is featured at The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire in a permanent, life-sized, interactive exhibit.  Other works have been used extensively as first-grade primers, as well as in text books and were included in The New York Times Parents’ Guide to the Best Books for Children.

Tanya Lee Stone writes for kids and teens. Her books include the novel A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl, nonfiction for older readers such as The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on Us and Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, and picture books Elizabeth Leads the Way and Sandy’s Circus: A Story About Alexander Calder. Her work has received numerous honors and awards, including ALA Notables, Kirkus Best Books, IRA Young Adult Choice, Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Amelia Bloomer Award, the Flora Steiglitz Straus Award, the Robert F. Sibert Medal, and many others. She teaches writing at Champlain College and has written for VOYA, Horn Book, School Library Journal, and the New York Times.

Judith Taylor is a writer, teacher and visual artist whose work reflects her particular interest in the creative process. She lives in Woodstock.

Sara Tucker is a writer and editor who quit a not-so-glamorous job with Condé Nast Traveler magazine, after some thirty years in the publishing biz, to move back to her hometown. She now teaches writing and lives with her mother, Idora, and her husband, Patrick Texier, a safari guide turned cartoonist. Her blog is The Hale Street Gang and Me.

Jen Vaughn received her MFA in Cartooning from the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont after mustang wranglin’ in her home state of Texas. She illustrates childrens’ activity books for Nomad Press and barcoding books at the Schulz Graphic Novel Library. See Jen’s work at www.mermaidhostel.com.

Lucinda Walker spent many happy hours in the Children’s Room of the Windsor Public Library.  She graduated from Oberlin College and received her MLS from Long Island University.  She’s worked at the Brooklyn Museum, the Mechanics’ Institute Library and been the Director of the Norwich Public Library since 2002. Lucinda serves on the Board of the GMLC and is the Public Library section head of the Vermont Library Association.